Helix Nebula is a monster fluoro tube

A fine web of filaments in the blue and red gas ring can be seen in this mosaic image of the Helix Nebula from the Hubble Space Telescope (Pic: ESA/NASA/HST)

Our spectacular view of a nearby planetary nebula was captured by luck when the Hubble Space Telescope was turned around to avoid damage from a meteor storm  directly towards the Helix Nebula.

While it waited out the storm, the Hubble used nine orbits to take separate photographs of the massive coil-shaped nebula, which were assembled in a mosaic by astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The mosaic was then blended with a wide view from a 0.9 metre Earth-based telescope in Arizona, U.S.A.

The Helix Nebula is a fluorescing cylinder of gigantic proportions pointing directly at Earth. From our vantage point, we are looking straight down a tunnel of glowing gases a million million kilometres long, making it look more like a bubble than a cylinder. 650 light years away, its diameter is nearly three light years across, about three-quarters of the distance between our Sun and the nearest star.

Planetary nebulae like the Helix have nothing to do with the formation of planets  they just look like planetary discs through small telescopes. The Helix Nebula was formed by a torrent of gases gushing from a dying star. Most of the radiant colours are from glowing hydrogen, with red from nitrogen and blue from oxygen.

For the first time, astronomers are able to get a detailed view of thousands of comet-like tentacles that appear to collar the central star, now a small but superhot white dwarf. They believe the filaments result from hot blasts of stellar wind ploughing through older shells of dust and gas left by earlier eruptions.

The Helix Nebula can be seen through binoculars as a ghostly, green-coloured cloud in the constellation Aquarius. The European Space Agency unveiled its image today to mark Astronomy Day.